


A Perfect Circle

by mortalitasi



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Family, Friendship, Gen, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liara lives up to the promise-slash-threat she made at Grissom. She finds Jack's surname - and a whole lot more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perfect Circle

_Jennifer had been her mother’s name._

_Jennifer._

_It had always sounded nice, right from the very beginning. Jennifer meant warm apple cider cookies and newly-baked bread, comfort between stretches of nightmare-filled sleep, the cool touch of a wet cloth on a fevered forehead, lovingly told bedtime stories— she’d wanted to pass that legacy onto her daughter, and while she sat in the living room with classical Earth music playing all around her, she’d thought about what little Jennifer and she would be able to do together._

_The nursery has been ready since maybe the third week of them finding out. They’d tried so hard and for so long, and now at last there was a reward for their efforts— a reward that kicked a hell of a lot and caused the worst morning sickness she’d ever felt, but a reward nonetheless. She closes her eyes as the sonata ends and listens to the tinkle of the tiny windchimes her husband has hung over the hallway door._

_She smiles and laughs when she feels the now-familiar flutter of baby legs, and silently wishes everything will be alright._

Come to us soon, Jennifer,  _she thinks as she reaches for her unfinished glass of orange juice._ Come to us so we can love you with everything we have. 

—

_The doctor says at one point that there’s a high chance of the baby being born with a predisposition— what is it they’re calling them?— biotics, right? They’re concerned the first time they hear, asking if there’s treatment, but the doctor just grins and shakes his hands at them and says it’s not an illness, but a gift. Biotics, he says. Like the asari commandos. Did you live anywhere near large amounts of element zero at the time of conception?_

_She has to think back, way back, and at last she says, do you mean eezo?_

_The doctor gives her a small condescending smile, the type a teacher gives an unread kid. But she’s too excited to feel the prickle of displeasure— too excited, and too concerned._

_Yeah, the doctor says. Eezo._

_It wouldn’t be a problem, just a factor of physiology, he continues, and gives her a tissue to wipe away the ultrasound gel with. She’d never be able to use the biotics anyway even if she did have them without an implant— or multiple ones, he continues. He knows an awful lot, doesn’t he? It makes her glad that they don’t have the money or ambition to want to put Jennifer in one of those bootcamps the Alliance sponsors, even if she does have the whatchamacallit gene— she’ll be too busy being a kid and learning and just being a little girl to have any time for that._

_Katherine’s pulling her shirt down when the doctor claps David on the back and says to him words she’ll replay in her head for years, on the nights she can’t sleep and stays up thinking and rethinking everything, reliving each and every breath of every moment that Jennifer had still been with them._

_That’s going to be one lucky girl, the doctor had remarked. Very lucky indeed._

_—_

_"They said it wouldn’t be a problem," she’s sobbing into David’s shirt, but she’s not sure he can understand what she’s saying._

_"I know, sweetheart," he says shakily, clasping a hand over her shoulder. The sounds of her crying have long since stopped being a gurgly mess— now it’s just dry and rough and hoarse, like someone who wants to give up and puke already, but she hasn’t had time for anything but the tears. She knows that even when they’re not rolling down over her cheeks and dripping into David’s vest anymore, she’ll still be weeping. She’ll be that way forever._

_"I didn’t even get to hold her," she says, the breath in her throat catching on the way out somewhere between her teeth, and she hiccups. David turns his body on the bed and hugs her, as though he’s trying to absorb the entirety of her trembling. Her hands fist at his back, twisting into the fabric, and the IV jabs cruelly into her vein, but she doesn’t care anymore. The pain seems distant, like someone else is feeling it._

_"I know, sweetheart," he repeats, as though he has no idea what else to say, and cards his fingers through her sodden hair, stroking at her temple with his thumb. "I know."_

_—_

_They move out of the small house shortly after, though they don’t sell it. There’s a silent agreement between them that they can’t stand to look at the things they prepared._

_They take down the nursery together, decoration by decoration, windchime and fluffy pillow, baby mobile and crib and stuffed teddy— when she moves to displace the letters across the doorway,_ JENNIFER _in soft, happy blue, she breaks down and clamps a hand over her eyes, trying to stop the hot running stream of salted sorrow._

_He squeezes her hand through it, tight white knuckles locked together, until she can close the box and tape it shut._

_—_

_The anniversaries come and go, flickering in and out of their lives like candles in the wind, and one year turns to many. They learn how to not talk about things that remind them of her, but they never forget, and they never try for another._

_On the eighteenth year, the colony is attacked. Spikes bloom from the ground, planted by machine-people with headlights for eyes— geth— and so many die, so many: marines and farmers and the butcher and his wife and their kids, and she sits quiet in the kitchen with David, their backs pressed to the wall, shattered glass sprinkled all around them, and she’s still holding his hand when he bleeds out a little too much, takes a deep breath, and doesn’t move again._

_Eden Prime turns into hell._

_She doesn’t speak when the Alliance backup forces find her, lets them pick her up, but she doesn’t let go. She can’t let go. Not again._

_"Ma’am," a nice girl with dark brown eyes tells her, "I know this must be incredibly hard for you, but we’ve got to get you out of here. It’s not safe anymore."_

_The girl doesn’t understand. It hasn’t been safe for a long time._

_—_

_She leaves Eden Prime and its ghosts behind, trades it out for another farming colony deep in Council space, this time, where she lives under another name and grows hyacinths and peppers and savory and peppermint in her garden, and tries to erase the fact that Katherine and her losses ever existed. It doesn’t work very well._

_Somewhere out on the fringes of the Terminus an unhappy twenty year old shaves her head—_  kept the haircut _, she’d say— and never lets anyone near her face again unless she’s the one putting them there, either with biotics or with her tongue. She never knows or guesses at what ifs. There’s no use in it._

_—_

Wars are waged across her lifetime. Maybe if she cared more, she’d at least attempt to be excited about the fact that she watches history being shaped every two years or so, but she’s too tired of moving houses and changing faces and always, always trying to forget like she and David did so long ago, so she takes each piece of news in her stride and goes where the tide takes her. 

She’s in her fourth house when they come knocking, multitasking between boiling potatoes for her gravy and potting the new strawberry plant. She swings the door open while she pulls off one glove and blinks at surprise at the people standing on her threshold.

One’s a young woman maybe a head taller than her with great big green eyes and hair she’s not quite sure about labelling auburn— or blond. That one looks familiar. The other’s a pretty, powder-blue asari (does any other type of asari exist?) with a gradient of beautiful glittering scales along her scalp. The asari smiles welcomingly while the human watches her carefully. 

"Katherine Hale?"

That’s a name she hasn’t heard in a very long time. 

"Yes?" she says uncertainly and against her better judgment, still keeping back, one palm on the doorknob. 

"I’m Commander Shepard," the human says, and it all clicks together. That’s where she’s seen the girl’s face— on the news, the vids, military recruitment motivationals. What in the world is she doing here? The commander steps back and gestures to the asari. "This is my associate, Liara T’soni. We’re here to talk to you about something we think you’d want to know."

They shake hands. The commander’s grip is warm and firm, rough with years of hard living, like the marines’ on Eden Prime. 

"Ms Hale," the asari breaks in gently. She has a soothing voice, like the hush of rain over ficus leaves. "May we come in?"

—

They sit outside Shepard’s apartment and wait while Ms Hale goes inside, leaning on the skycar, Shepard fretting about Jack’s reaction. Liara laughs, remembering the greeting punch at Grissom Academy, and Yma scowls at her, saying, “It’s not funny.”

Silence falls for a moment.

"She has her mother’s eyes," Liara says. Ms Hale is a slight woman with silver streaks in her dark brown hair, nothing like Jack, lean and mean, but the smile and the eyes are two things that Cerberus could not stop her from giving to her daughter. Shepard smiles a smile of her own and crosses her arms, dogtags clinking with the movement. 

"Yeah. Let’s hope the temper isn’t a family thing."

Liara looks up at the apartment’s tinted windows, trying to imagine what’s going on inside. Times like these are the ones in which she loves being an information broker more than everything else. 

"I don’t think you have anything to worry about."


End file.
